Nature of a Pirate giveaway on Goodreads ends tomorrow!

Child of a Hidden Sea

Child of a Hidden Sea

The Nature of a Pirate will be out on December 6th, just over a month from now, and Goodreads is running a giveaway for all of October. This means you have one more spooktacular day to sign up and potentially win one of the five advance copies on offer.

But wait–there’s more! What if you haven’t read the first two books in this series? I’m pleased to say Goodreads is also running a giveaway for ten copies of book #1, Child of a Hidden Sea. You’ve got a little longer to get in on that offer–it runs to November 9th.

To recap and make it easy.

 

These two books are the first and last in the Hidden Sea Tales trilogy. The middle book, A Daughter of No Nation, won the Prix Aurora for best novel this past year.  They feature, collectively and in no particular order, a scuba-diving biologist from San Francisco, tall ships, a magical world that might be a future earth devastated by climate change, handsome sea captains, pirates, spies, murderers, diplomats, swordfights, mermaids in the navy, forensic science,  and an international incident caused by a fight over turtle migration.

The books are the story of Sophie Hansa, who went looking for her birth family and found them on the world of Stormwrack, and who finds in Stormwrack her professional calling: a world that offers endless mysteries to tempt her boundless curiosity, and whose profligate use of magic is a challenge to her rigorous training as a scientist. They are books where a woman who believes that scientific puzzles are there for the solving delves into the question of magic, and how it can exist at all, on a world whose people mistrust the curious, seeing them as defective at best, spies and troublemakers at worst.

To make matters even more complicated, Stormwrack has a perfectly good supply of real spies and troublemakers, people who would like to get Sophie and all of her questions out of the way, so they can get back to the business of trying to rekindle a massive international war.

Heroine Spotlight and Hidden Sea Tales Giveaway!

tnaop smallI am happy to say I am the Author of the Month this June at The Heroine Bookstore, an online venture that promotes genre works with female protagonists.  There’s an interview with me at the bookstore site and, to sweeten the pot, THB is giving away copies of Child of a Hidden Sea and a A Daughter of No Nation. Entry deadline is June 24th; the winner will be announced the next day.

You can enter the contest here.

As I write these words, we are at the halfway point between the release of book two, the above-mentioned A Daughter of No Nation and the final episode in the Hidden Sea Tales, The Nature of a Pirate. The third book brings Sophie back into direct conflict with the nations of the Piracy, and particularly with Convenor Brawn of Isle of Gold.

With the exception of Issle Morta, Parrish’s monk-riddled homeland, the surviving nations of the Piracy have been frustrated for over a century. They see pillaging on the high seas as an important cultural practice, and they argue that the Fleet’s protection of the smaller and most vulnerable nations of Stormwrack is doing these peoples no favors. Pirates firmly believe in the idea of survival of the fittest… where the fittest are themselves and any country with a navy powerful enough to deter all comers. Many of the big political events since Sophie’s arrival have been caused by the Piracy’s determination to break the Fleet and the treaty that holds it together. Come December, you’ll all get to check out their next big try.

 

Team Parrish for the Win in the latest #Stormwrack review

photo by Kelly Robson

photo by Kelly Robson

I love it when people love Garland, and happily for me Jenn at Lost in a Great Book says…

Speaking of Parrish … talk about some unresolved issues! There were various points throughout the book where I yelled at Sophie to just kiss him already. The tension between the two of them is fantastic and irritating in equal measure, simply because you know they are awesome together. I loved how Sophie owned her sexuality and didn’t apologize for having previous partners, and how she could now admit to herself that she really, really wanted to be with Parrish. (Confession: So do I.)

This is the last stop on my interview tour of Canadian book blogs, and she turned The Heroine Question round on me. I probably should have expected this, and it was fun to tell her all about the early history books I read as a six and seven year old.

Sleeping Hedgehog, meanwhile, has a new review of Child of a Hidden Sea.

Child of a Hidden Sea $2.99 ebook and things you can win!

By way of a tasty appetizer for the release of ​A Daughter of No Nation, my marvelous publisher Tor Books has put the e-book edition of ​Child of a Hidden Sea on sale in all digital formats: Kindle, iBook, B&N Nook, Kobo and Google Play. Feel like spreading the word? Here’s a Tweet:

A second appetizer course will be coming your way shortly, in the form of an excerpt from the new book, which will be out December 1st.

Meanwhile, don’t forget that Goodreads giveaway. The odds are currently about one in a hundred for you to be one of five lucky winners who’ll get advance copies of the novel. And I’m running a contest for a copy of your choice of my first three novels. You can still get in on both draws- details are here!

Slings and Shelfies

(null)A Daughter of No Nation is on the Shelfie Top 10 list for Most Anticipated SF and Fantasy books, in great company, with novels by Charlie Jane Anders, Kameron Hurley and Catherynne M. Valente. Review copies of the book are percolating out to the usual (and hopefully a few unusual) suspects. Soon we’ll be hearing what people think of the second installment of Sophie Hansa’s adventures.

I’m finding the prospect a little nerve-wracking. I don’t think there was anyone who absolutely hated ​Blue Magic. There were a few people whose response came down to “Holy gosh, this book sure do have a lotta queer people in it!” but there’s not much you can do about that except go, “Yep.”

Child of a Hidden Sea, on the other hand, and Sophie in particular got under a few readers’ skins, and not always in a way that led to true and enduring love. I decided to take this as a sign that I’d become better at characterization, especially since most of the reviews were, in fact, raves. Anyway, it might simply be the effect of a lingering head cold, or the fallout from a rather unusual week, but right now I’m thinking my only sane response is to go “La la la, can’t hear you!” and think of something else until my head clears.

Having been to Stratford for the first time this past weekend, and having seen three shows – Carousel, The Alchemist, and She Stoops to Conquer, Kelly and I are finally embarking on watching Slings and Arrows. We’ve had so many chances to do so over the years–I think people have lent us the DVDs on three separate occasions, and we never quite managed to pop one into the gadget before sheepishly returning the disks.  It’s been one of those gaps that was almost embarrassing to admit to, what with me being such a raging Paul Gross fan. But it never happened, until now, and it’s almost–but not quite–too dated. It’ll be good prep for seeing His Almighty Grossness and Martha Burns in Domesticated next month.